poweredbycoldfusion

I did it when it felt relevant. If I had a good interview, I 100% sent the email. I thanked my student hosts in person before I left, so no emails there.

^This. Don't take advice on academia from people who aren't in academia...and sometimes academics aren't sure how the system works. Some of the best departments are at what some would consider 'not good' state schools. If you liked the city/area of St. Louis, there's no reason not to go.

The program is aiming to offer admissions to ~70% of it's interviewees. Still, that means there are a lot of qualified candidates who were invited for interviews and are getting waitlisted/rejected. My big issue is, when I met the program director, I thought they seemed bored and uninterested in my previous research and in me as a candidate. This wasn't during an interview, but it does make me nervous.

Has anyone got wait listed at a school they've interviewed at and really loved? This is a huge fear, and although I thought I had good interviews and interactions with the students and faculty, maybe they liked someone better.

I really like the Green Lake neighborhood in Seattle, but it's at the very northern edge of King's county and not close to the campus. If you have a car, driving to campus could be an option, and there are tons of bike lines and a reliable shuttle to downtown. The rent isn't as expensive as further south, and it's a nice community (even if it's not as young/exciting as cap hill).

Yup, the GRE is terrible and GPA can be difficult to compare. Professional schools do it, though, and have algorithms to weight GPA by under grad institution. Only 1/3 of my graduating class had a GPA above 3.5 in bio. This was the normal across many science majors.

Came across this advice forever ago, but it really changed the way I interact in public. The 'Hold your space' line of thinking rang so true for me. I stopped pretending to try and be an extrovert...and became more social as a result? I felt like I could be myself while not being intimidated into prattle and small talk. There are lots of other introverts in science, so talking all the time isn't necessary.

I'm in a very similar situation. Unfortunately, the biggest negative take away from this application cycle is that, since the application numbers are up and funding is down, lots of schools sort out otherwise qualified applicants (with lots of experience) based on lower ugGPAs. A positive take away is that even lower ranked schools have serious strengths in their research departments and can offer you (me?) plenty of resources, support, and mentoring. This thread is really important because a lot of 'applying to grad school' information is targetted at those still in undergrad. However, one of the sneaky things I've noticed is that not even half of my interview groups were direct from undergrad. Only about a third of them were. Taking 'time off' is *not* uncommon, and I've seen the statistics for the med school where I work (they send them out to staff in an email), and 75% of the matriculating class did not come directly from undergrad. This is a top 10 US med school.

Fit--this is why you should apply to any school. I didn't go to undergrad at a state school (even a good one) because I didn't like how big they were and was lucky enough to have a private, researched focus school as an option. Grad school is very different, and often, big state schools have the resources to attract more faculty, which increases the chances that there will be faculty there who work on my interests. I've done my tech work at an Ivy. Your experience will be lab and department dependent. In general, the labs and projects are more insular than collaborative, but once again, that's lab dependant. There are labs at public unis that are run the same way, and there are labs at Ivies that have healthy research cultures.

Way to go, alma mater.

There are some interviewers who are on the adcom, and they meet with every candidate. It's very clear who these people are because they're usually not related to your specific research (unless you were interested in their work anyway), and they ask more questions about why you chose the program or what attracted you to it. I would say about half my interviewers were on the adcom, and my other half were professors looking for students. Anyway, yes, there definitely is a ranking going in, even if it is a loose one. It's clear that some people have more interviews from professors (as in more profs are interested in having them rotate in their labs). Schools interview students differently; some schools are basically interviewing their wait list and their acceptance list and some schools are only interviewing top candidates. Even at schools with very high acceptance rates, there are always going to be students who are rejected because a student behaved inappropriately, was arrogant, or the research fit was very poor (there ended up being a small number of profs for them to work with and they didn't interview well with those profs). Also, the fellowship/trainee grant thing exists so that the school can try and attract their top candidates because top candidates will usually get multiple offers. I wouldn't worry about not getting an acceptance yet, though. Some people on grad cafe have gotten accepted, but there are many schools who are still interviewing and won't notify for a while yet.

Even if you gain more experience, your GPA is still going to hurt you. I picked experience over Master's and paid the price for that a bit. The list of schools you applied to shouldn't be unmanagable with your GPA, though (except Princeton). As a lower GPA applicant, the struggle is real but that doesn't mean you can't get interviews/acceptances. You should probably retake the GRE, too, which won't minimized your GPA but it'll make it look more of a fluke in an otherwise strong application.

Have you ever worked for a major corporation? They pay moving expenses. S.O. does, and I know exactly how much they pay for gas (and if they'll pay for a plane ticket or make you drive based on the distance of the move), number of days they'll put you up in a hotel room, number of days you can rent a car, and even that they'll hook you up with a realator during relocation. Even smaller companies will do something (like pay for gas/give a small stipend) to get and keep people they're really interested in. Moving is a pain. The only way you get around that is to hire local talent only, but it can get difficult to fill high skill jobs from a local applicant pool. Grad schools are on a tighter budget, so moving packages aren't typical. This comment is either a troll or posted by someone who has also never worked in the corporate world.

Boston and Cambridge are both pretty nice places. The people I know who've gone to MIT feel the same way you do about it.

It's not so much about finances as it is about demonstrating that they're very serious about you as a candidate and have the ability to support you. Those type of awards only go to top candidates. That's actually a pretty huge deal, so congrats! Maybe email/try to set up phone calls with some of the professors you're interested in? This could help you decide where you see yourself researching.

The students were super honest about it, and also, you can tell from people's life styles how far the money is going.

Pre-doctoral in biomed. I'd at least like to get an honorable mention, and I'm genuinely looking forward to the feedback on my writing/strength of application.

An interviewee said something super racist. I don't care *what* stereotypes your friends who are already in grad school told you...just don't.

Sounds like Michigan *wants* you more. Schools that give you better fellowships/training grants = schools that really want to keep you. That's really important, too, because it's a quantifiable measure of departmental support. Of course, if you *really* can't pass up Berkley...believe me, I was in that situation with my undergrad uni. I took the more expensive option (although I did have grant/scholarship support, too), but as a PhD in STEM, I expect to be fully funded.

This is a really fun idea I'm not sure how I'd quantify certain factors. There's a monetary aspect to it that's easier to judge, but program prestige vs lab prestige vs likability of individuals in the program vs oppertunities for students to grow as scientists is a bit harder to quantify.

I work for someone like this. If you're a highly independent student/worker, this situation could benefit you. You could have a lot of intellectual freedom to develop your project(s). There are upsides to working for a PI like this. One of them is what I mentioned: intellectual freedom, a greater amount of flexibility, getting to do more indepth presenations in lab meeting (because your PI hasn't seen your data before). In contrast, I've also worked for a PI that micromanaged their lab. If you want to work at the bench with the PI, see them everyday, and be able to 'check in' more often, this type of situation may work better for you. It depends what you think fits your working style best, but don't let a more hands off PI intimidate you if you think that situation would work really well for you.

Agree. The only people I personally know who've gotten in with under a 3.0 did so by pulling strings or on a special admit type of basis. The realities of how seriously GPA is weighted in biomedicine in particular was something I wasn't completely aware of before I applied. It's just as important as experience, and GPA is how students become competitive for external funding. Also, there is a culture in academia that has to be taken into account. A lot (not all) of these profs were very excellent students themselves and only want to take on similar students and may not respect or want to risk their school's reputation on lower GPA applicants. This isn't all profs, but funding is tight, application numbers are up across the board, and students that appear to be a risk are going to have a tough time.

Part of the reason I took time off after undergrad is because I had a change of goals from med school to research. Also, I'll note that the people who I work with who've gotten MD/PhDs find, later in life, that they either have to priortize seeing patients or doing research. I love medical research and really do see it as my future, and when I shadowed doctors, I realized I would never feel that way about working with patients. Even though I enjoyed my time volunteering, I didn't enjoy it in the same way that I enjoyed spending time in a lab and conducting research.